Foreign News: Friendship

In the fishing village of Lossiemouth in Scotland’s Morayshire, two raw, porridge-fed youngsters worked and played side by side, developed into firm friends. The name of one was James Ramsay MacDonald, the other’s Alexander Grant. MacDonald’s uncle and Grant’s father were both guards on the Highland Railway. All that was 60 years ago.

Both lads rose in the world. From schoolteacher and invoice clerk, MacDonald became in 1924 Britain’s first Laborite Prime Minister. Grant started as a baker’s boy in an Edinburgh biscuit company, became general manager of McVitie & Price, Ltd. and wealthy enough to give Scotland a National Library.

The two friends remained close through the years. One day Grant spied Prime Minister MacDonald in a London subway, took him to task for wasting his energy unnecessarily, told him he should use a motor. When MacDonald, who had no private income, explained that he could not afford the upkeep of a car, Grant gave him one and endowed it with 30,000 preferred shares of McVitie & Price at £1 each. Three months later Prime Minister MacDonald successfully advised King George V to confer a baronetcy on Grant. In the House of Commons, His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition rose savagely to suggest that the Prime Minister had done this to repay a private debt. Correspondence between the Laborite and the Tycoon was produced showing that the Prime Minister had argued for the maintenance of “his simplicity of habit,” that Grant had argued that the Prime Minister should “save his strength for the nation.” Touched by this proof of honest friendship, the Opposition dropped the issue.

Sir Alexander Grant died last month. His will was probated last week. Under its terms Ramsay MacDonald will receive for the rest of his life the income from $200,000, about $7,500 a year. To Ramsay MacDonald this windfall is happily not so all-important financially as loyal, generous Sir Alexander had thought it would be. By an act of Parliament, passed after the will was made, Mr. MacDonald is entitled to a pension of $10,000 a year as a onetime Prime Minister. Moreover, because fortnight ago he decided to stay in the House of Commons rather than accept an earldom (TIME, June 7), he will get an additional $3,000 a year as long as he is a member of Parliament.